Nothing Civil About War
by The Other Jet Engine
Summary: ...For there was no story that caused more trauma than that of Thaal Sinestro and Hal Jordan.
1. Prelude-Oh, No, I'm So Sorry

**Full Summary:**

**Maxine was not having a good day.**

**Her period hit her like a goddamn truck, her ADHD made nothing make sense, and everyone at her apartment was so freaking loud and annoying it's a wonder she didn't scream at them. **

**One day she found a mysterious VR machine that looked like an eye patch, and put it on before going to sleep.**

**Only to wake up the next morning as a game character.**

**With the Justice League knocking on her door and talking to her like they've known her for years. **

**Here's to hoping Maxine doesn't screw this up! **

* * *

I was jolted awake by the sound of gunfire in one of the neighboring stacks. The shots were followed by a few minutes of muffled shouting and screaming, then silence.

Gunfire wasn't uncommon in the stacks, but it still shook me up. A lot of people owned guns around here, claiming 'personal safety'—a valid concern, but more often than not the guns just ended up being used to shoot anyone who you thought was looking at you the wrong way. Such is life in the stacks.

I knew I should try to go back to sleep, but that wasn't an easy task. I was curled up in an old sleeping bag in the corner of the trailer's tiny laundry room, wedged into the gap between the wall and the dryer. I wasn't welcome in my aunt's room across the hall, which was fine by me. I preferred to crash in the laundry room anyway. It was warm, it afforded me a limited amount of privacy, and the wireless reception wasn't too bad. And, as an added bonus, the room smelled like liquid detergent and fabric softener. The rest of the trailer reeked of cat pee-pee and abject poverty.

Most of the time I slept in my hideout. But the temperature had dropped below zero the past few nights, and as much as I hated staying at my aunt's place, it still beat freezing to death.

A total of fifteen people lived in my aunt's trailer. She slept in the smallest of its three bedrooms. The Depperts lived in the bedroom adjacent to hers, and the Millers occupied the large master bedroom at the end of the hall. There were six of them, and they paid the largest share of the rent. Our trailer wasn't as crowded as some of the other units in the stacks. It was a double-wide. Plenty of room for everybody.

I pulled out my laptop and powered it on. It was a bulky, heavy beast, almost ten years old. I'd found it in a trash bin behind the abandoned strip mall across the highway. I'd been able to coax it back to life by replacing its system memory and reloading the stone-age operating system. The processor was slower than a sloth by current standards, but it was fine for my needs. The laptop served as my portable research library, video arcade, and home theater system. It's hard drive was filled with old books, movies, TV show episodes, song files, and nearly every video game made in the twentieth century.

Normally when I couldn't sleep, which was more often than not, I'd try to play one of the old games stored on my computer.

Tonight, however, I was feeling in a bit of a maudlin mood, so I pulled up something special.

Ursa Major's Invitation opens with the sound of trumpets, the intro to a song called 'Dead Man's Party.' Slightly arrogant and self-important, but also somehow fitting. That was Callisto Underwood to a T.

The song plays over a dark screen for the first few seconds, until the trumpets are joined by a guitar, and that's when Underwood appears. She looks just as she did on the cover of Time magazine back in 2014, a tall, thin, healthy woman in her early forties, with unkempt hair and her trademark horn-rimmed eyeglasses. She's also wearing the same clothing she wore in the Time cover photo:faded jeans and a vintage Space Invaders T-shirt.

I always pause the video here. Underwood fills the screen, dancing—something no one ever saw her do in real life. When I was younger, I loved to look at this image because she just looked so happy.

Around here, happiness has always very much been in short supply. I was the only child of two teenagers, both refugees who'd met in the stacks where I'd grown up. I don't remember my father. When I was just a few months old, he was shot dead while looting a grocery store during a power blackout. The only thing I really knew about him was that he loved comic books. My mom once told me that my dad had given me an alliterative name, Maxine Morris, because he thought it made me sound like I had the secret identity of a superhero.

I thought it made me sound like an idiot.

My mother, Loretta, had raised me on her own. We'd lived in a small RV in another part of the stacks. She had two full-time 4D jobs, one as a telemarketer, the other as an escort in an online brothel. She used to make me wear earplugs at night so I wouldn't hear her in the next room, talking dirty to tricks in other time zones. But the earplugs didn't work very well, so I would watch old movies instead, with the volume turned way up.

For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.

I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said:

_Here's the deal, Max. You're something called a 'human being.' That's a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we're descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you'll learn more about it later. You're probably wondering what happened before you got here. An awful lot of stuff, actually. Once we evolved into humans, things got pretty interesting. We figured out how to grow food and domesticate animals so we didn't have to spend all of our time hunting. Our tribes got much bigger, and we spread across the entire planet like an unstoppable virus. Then, after fighting a bunch of wars with each other over land, resources, and our made-up gods, we eventually got all of our tribes organized into a 'global civilization.' But, honestly, it wasn't all that organized, or civilized, and we continued to fight a lot of wars with each other. But we also figured out how to do science, which helped us develop technology. For a bunch of hairless apes, we've actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things. Computers. Medicine. Lasers. Microwave ovens. Artificial hearts. Atomic bombs. We even sent a few guys to the moon and brought them back. We also created a global communications network that lets us all talk to each other, all around the world, all the time. Pretty impressive, right?_

_But that's where the bad news comes in. Our global civilization came at a huge cost. We needed a whole buncha energy to build it, and we got that energy by burning fossil fuels, which came from dead plants and animals buried deep in the ground. We used up most of this fuel before you got here, and now it's pretty much all gone. This means that we no longer have enough energy to keep our civilization running like it was before. So we've had to cut back. Big-time. We call this the Global Energy Crisis, and it's been going on for a while now._

_Also, it turns out that burning all of those fossil fuels had some nasty side effects, like raising the temperature of our planet and screwing up the environment. So now the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the weather is all messed up. Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless. And we're still fighting wars with each other, mostly over the few resources we have left._

_Basically, what this all means is that life is a lot tougher than it used to be, in the Good Old Days, back before you were born. To be honest, the future doesn't look too bright. You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out. Human civilization is in 'decline.' Some people even say it's 'collapsing.'_

_You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you. That's easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You're going to die. We all die. That's just how it is._

_What happens when you die? Well, we're not completely sure. But the evidence seems to suggest that nothing happens. You're just dead, your brain stops working, and then you're not around to ask annoying questions anymore. So now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you're going to die someday and disappear forever._

_Sorry. _

When I would finally work up the guts to press play on Ursa Major's Invitation again, I was always jarred when the lyrics of the song finally kicked in. After staring at a still image for a while and being only alone with my thoughts, the sudden advent of another person's voice always seemed too loud. Eventually, Underwood begins to lip-sync along, still gyrating:All dressed up with nowhere to go. Walking with a dead man over my shoulder. Don't run away, it's only me...

She abruptly stops dancing and makes a cutting motion with her right hand, silencing the music. Underwood now stands at the front of a funeral parlor, next to an open casket. A second Underwood lies inside the casket, her body emaciated and ravaged by cancer. Shiny quarters cover each of her eyelids. The other Underwood gazes down at the corpse of her slightly older self with mock sadness, then turns to address the assembled mourners. She snaps her fingers and a scroll appears in her right hand. Opening it with a flourish, it unfurls to the floor, unraveling down the aisle in front of her. She breaks the fourth wall, addressing the viewer, and begins to read.

"I, Callisto Donovan Underwood, being of sound mind and disposing memory, do hereby make, publish, and declare this instrument to be my last will and testament, hereby revoking any and all wills and codicils by me at any time heretofore made..." She continues reading, faster and faster, plowing through several more paragraphs of legalese, until she's speaking so rapidly that the words are unintelligible. Then she stops abruptly.

"Forget it", she says. "Even at that speed, it would take me a month to read the whole thing. Sad to say, I don't have that kind of time." She drops the scroll and it vanishes in a shower of gold dust.

* * *

"If there's one thing we can never have enough of," Underwood continues, brushing gold dust off her sleeves, "it's time. There is never the time to do everything or see everything or experience everything we want. That, of course, is one of the main goals behind the creation of the Extraordinary VR Machine:to let one experience with their senses an experience that previously was only limited to the imagination. With this thingy," she says, pausing for effect, "all is possible." Callisto steps to the side and the scene changes, this time to reveal a huge vault door, emblazoned with the logo of her company, Gregarious Simulation Systems.

"In my life, I have done a great many things," Underwood says. "And as you are probably well aware, these things have made me a great deal of money. But," he comments with a sly grin, "there are some things you can't take with you, right?" She taps on the door and it swings open, revealing huge stacks of gold bars, piled all the way to the ceiling. Underwood smirks and leans back against the nearest stack, the camera pulling in close on her face in a zoom that I always found jarring.

"So," she says, clapping her hands together, "I bet all you folks are wondering what all this is, and if you can get your hands on any of this sweet, sweet dough. Well, hold up there, because I'm getting to that."

The world tilts and the vault disappears, morphing into a messy living room with burnt orange carpeting, wood-paneled walls, and kitschy late-'70s decor; the room packed with old magazines strewn about and random knick-knacks cluttering most of the available surfaces. The only area of the room that's remotely clear is the space directly in front of the television, an ancient 21-inch model. Hooked up to the television is a dusty but clearly beloved gaming console, and sitting cross-legged on the floor holding the joystick is a small girl, dressed neatly in corduroys and a faded t-shirt but with hair that looks like she's just walked through a windstorm.

"The Atari 2600," Underwood's voice says from behind the viewer, as she walked into frame. "This was the first video game system I ever owned," she remarks fondly. "This is me, just after I got it for Christmas in 1979. It was love at first sight."

She walks over and sits down next to the small girl, who is still engrossed in her game.

"My favorite game was this one," she says, nodding at the TV screen, where a small square is traveling through a series of simple mazes. "It was called Adventure. Like many early video games, Adventure was designed and programmed by just one person. But back then, Atari refused to give its programmers credit for their work, so the name of a game's creator didn't actually appear anywhere on the packaging." On the screen, young Underwood slays a red dragon, although with the low-res graphics it's hard to actually tell what anything is supposed to be.

"So the guy who created Adventure, a man named Warren Robinett, decided to hide his name inside the game itself," Underwood continues to explain. "He hid a key in one of the game's labyrinths. If you found this key, a small pixel-sized gray dot, you could use it to enter a secret room where Robinett had hidden his name." Young Underwood guides her square protagonist into the game's secret room, where the words CREATED BY WARREN ROBINETT appear in the center of the screen.

"This", the adult Underwood says, pointing to the screen with genuine reverence, "was the very first video game Easter egg. Robinett hid it in his game's code without telling a soul, and Atari manufactured and shipped Adventure all over the world without knowing about the secret room. They didn't find out about the Easter egg's existence until a few months later, when kids all over the world began to discover it. I was one of those kids, and finding Robinett's Easter egg for the first time was one of the coolest video gaming experiences of my life."

Underwood stands, and the living room faded away, transitioning into a dimly lit cavern, complete with the sounds of bats flying overhead and water dripping distantly. At the same time, Underwood's appearance changes, morphing into her more iconic self, Ursa Major—a tall, robed sorceress with a slightly more handsome version of the adult Underwood's face. Ursa Major was dressed in her trademark colorful robes, with her emblem(the Big Dipper) embroidered on each sleeve.

"When the doctors gave me my diagnosis," Ursa Major says, speaking in a much deeper voice, "I knew I had finally run out of time, and that I was no longer going to be able to do everything I dreamed about. But I didn't want my hopes and goals to die with me. My own Easter Egg is the first and only model of the Extraordinary VR machine I created."

She grins and the cavern lights up, a holographic overlay showing a map of the Four-Dimensional World, the internet world harboring the entire fictional omniverse, flickering to life.

"The first person to find my VR Machine will inherit a controlling share of stock in my company and my entire fortune, currently valued in excess of two hundred and forty billion dollars."

She pauses for effect, although after that bombshell, it isn't really necessary.

"But be warned, the thingy is well hidden. Perhaps even too well hidden. Part of me even worries that it may never be found. I never got to play-test this particular game," she chuckles, although humorlessly.


	2. REVENGEANCE

**Welp, we're here. The second part! Pairings featured in this fic are Hal X Sinestro, Ares X Zod, Hercules X Deianeira, Superman X Lady Dahlia and Maxine X Starfire.**

* * *

_Love Led Us Here-The Muppets_

_Was I dumb or was I blind? _

_Or did my heart just lose its mind? _

_Why'd I go and throw our perfect dream away? _

_Looking back I'll never know? _

_How I ever let you go? _

_But destiny could see we deserved to have another day! _

_Love led us here, _

_Right back to where we belong, _

_We followed a star, _

_And here we are, _

_Now heaven seems so near, _

_Love led us here! _

_Now I know that life can take you by surprise, _

_And sweep you off your feet, _

_Did this happen to us, _

_Or are we just dreaming? _

_Love led us here, _

_Right back to where we belong, _

_We followed a star, _

_And here we are, _

_Now heaven seems so near, _

_Love led us here! _

_So take my hand, _

_And have no fear, _

_We'll be alright, _

_Love led us here... _

Hal said yes. Stars didn't collapse in on themselves(not then anyway) and the earth didn't shake but everything changed.

Their legends changed from inspirations to young lanterns to dark cautionary tales on Earth and Oa. The Yellow Lantern Kings.

But every reign falls.

Between the Justice League and the remaining Lanterns, they were captured. Not before tearing a planet in half and decimating their attackers, of course.

In the end, Hal swayed on a broken leg, teeth stained with blood that wasn't all his. He leaned on Sinestro. "The freaking Phantom Zone, huh?" Hal snarled, and even Superman didn't want to look at him. He was bloody too.

Sinestro touched long fingers to the bottom of Hal's chin. They kissed like there was no one else there, and reveled in the shocked little gasps of the onlookers.

Hell itself would be Paradise as long as they were together.

And no prison would hold them for long. But before I can tell you how this came to be, I'll have to tell you THIS story.

* * *

Thaal Sinestro was born on the distant world of Korugar, when he was an adult he became an archaeologist as he was obsessed with the past. One day while on an archaeological dig Sinestro witnessed a space craft crash land near his dig site. Sinestro approached the spacecraft and discovered a mortally wounded alien inside. This alien was wearing a strange ring, which he offered up to Sinestro so he could battle the man that had injured him. At that moment the enemy arrived—a Weaponer of Qward. The Weaponers were a race of aliens from the Antimatter Universe whose culture was focused on war. Sinestro picked up the ring and slipped it on his finger, which instantly transformed Sinestro's clothes into a green suit. Sinestro soon figured out that the ring created whatever he desired as long as he had the will to power it. With this knowledge Sinestro quickly destroyed the Weaponer. When the alien asked for its ring back to he could receive medical attention, Sinestro refused and left the alien to die.

With this new power in his hands Sinestro decided that instead of digging up the past he would instead strive to build for the future. Eventually he was contacted by Abin Sur, another wielder of the green ring. Abin revealed to Sinestro that the ring was worn by all members of the Green Lantern Corps, a intergalactic police force tasked with ridding evil from the universe. Abin brought Sinestro to Oa, the home world of the Green Lantern Corps, to meet the Guardians of the Universe. The Guardians were the creators and leaders of the GLC, and they demanded Sinestro swear the Green Lantern Oath before being accepted into the Corps. Sinestro conceded and was inducted into the Corps, officially becoming a Green Lantern. He was tasked with keeping Sector 1417, which Korugar was situated in, safe from threats.

Sinestro soon became the greatest of the Green Lanterns, often fighting alongside his partner and friend Abin Sur. One day Abin took Sinestro to see his home planet, Ungara, where he met Abin's family. Sinestro soon became infatuated with Abin's sister Arin, and the pair quickly fell deeply in love. Eventually Arin and Sinestro wed, and Sinestro moved back to his home planet with his new bride. While on his home planet he realized that if he stretched his willpower to the limit he could make his world a paradise, an example of what a Green Lantern could really do. He began monitoring communications, populations and heartbeats so that nothing on his home planet would happen without his knowledge. He also created robots out of his willpower to patrol the bustling city of Korugar. Within a few years Sinestro controlled the whole planet, and was eventually named dictator for life.

At some point, Sinestro had a baby daughter with Arin which they named Soranik. However after threats to the baby were made by disgruntled civilians, Arin would hide Soranik somewhere on the world, far from her father's reach and influence. Eventually Abin Sur died on a mission and his replacement from Earth named Hal Jordan became Sinestro's new partner. In the same way he did with Abin, Sinestro found a quick friend in Jordan and then, they wordlessly fell in love with each other. Some time later, Sinestro would discover Arin's body in their room sometime after they occupied the home of the former government. Though Sinestro claims she was killed by dissenters from the council of leaders he exiled, the flashback implies she killed herself, unable to deal with the monster her husband was becoming. The grief Sinestro felt from the loss of his wife and child caused him to become even more tyrannical, and ultimately culminating in his removal from the Green Lantern Corps...who got mad when they discovered what was going on, and an equally mad Sinestro attacked 'em, causing a total donnybrook. Afterwards, Jordan moved over Sinestro and romantically pursued his boss, the lovely Carol Ferris.

And that was when stuff began falling out of place.

Well, after losing Hal, Thaal found out that he actually had no feelings for Arin Sur, not even the slightest, and he loved no one before Hal Jordan. Well, normally, a Red Lantern ring would have zeroed in on his blind anger, but instead, he refused such thing and decided to take up a Yellow Lantern ring, created his own lantern gang, and then vowed revengeance against the greens..._and_ Carol Ferris.

* * *

"That's it for now." said the Yellow Lantern Aldar, the leader and founding member of the Yellow Green Squadron(Injustice equivalent to the Green Sinestro Scouts) along with his sister, the Green Lantern Kiyere.

Deianeira, the newest addition to the Squadron, was listening with eager ears. "O-o-h, I do hope that Hal and Thaal get back together as soon as possible!" She had a green ring, and was inducted into the Squadron at the tender age of 25.

"Yep, I wish the same for them too." said Kiyere, who was nearby. "And don't forget, if you're gonna report a donnybrook over by the Heel-Face Turn Corner, be sure to send Mogo after the diabolical Lady Dahlia."

"Will do." replied Deianeira, and took off for Earth. She was looking forward to meeting Wonder Woman again.

_MEANWHILE..._

"I've got you, Carol." said a yellow Hal, as he caught his girlfriend with a construct before she could hit the ground.

"Hal?" asked Carol. "What happened to you?"

"He has fallen." Injustice Ganthet told her.

"Fallen?!" Sinestro retaliated. "Fallen from WHAT?! He has found a truer path, you self-righteous—"

_Surrender-Cheap Trick_

_Mother told me, yes, she told me, _

_That I'd meet girls like you, _

_She also told me, "Stay away, _

_You'll never know what you'll catch"_

_Just the other day I heard, _

_Of a soldier's falling off, _

_Some Indonesian junk, _

_That's going round. _

_Mommy's alright, _

_Daddy's alright, _

_They just seem a little weird, _

_Surrender, _

_Surrender, _

_But don't give yourself away! _

_Hey, heeeeeey! _

_Father says, "Your mother's right, _

_She's really up on things, _

_Before we married, Mommy served, _

_In the WACS in the Philippines", _

_Now, I had heard the WACS recruited, _

_Old maids for the war, _

_But mommy isn't one of those, _

_I've known her all these years. _

_Mommy's alright, _

_Daddy's alright, _

_They just seem a little weird, _

_Surrender, _

_Surrender, _

_But don't give yourself away! _

_Hey, heeeeeey! _

_Whatever happened to all this season's, _

_Losers of the year? _

_Every time I got to thinking, _

_Where'd they disappear? _

_But when I woke up, Mom and Dad, _

_Are rolling on the couch, _

_Rolling numbers, rock and rollin', _

_Got my KISS records out. _

_Mommy's alright, _

_Daddy's alright, _

_They just seem a little weird, _

_Surrender, _

_Surrender, _

_But don't give yourself away! _

_Hey, heeeeeey! _

_Away—! _

_Away—! _

_Surrender, _

_Surrender, _

_But don't give yourself away! _

_(Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright) _

_Surrender, _

_Surrender, _

_But don't give yourself away! _

_(Bun E's alright, Tommy's alright, Robin's alright, Rick's alright) _

_(We're all alright) _

_(We're all alright!) _

_(We're all alright!) _

_(We're all alright!) _

_[repeat to fade] _

When Max's aunt Sally announced she was going to marry her boyfriend next week, she just replied with an "alright". And now she was riding her bicycle to her hideout, a mile away from her apartment. She kept a lot o' video games and movies plus a bedroom and a kitchen there. Yes, she could cook, despite being only 14. Along the way, she found a sleeping eye patch, and decided to keep it. After arriving at her hideout and playing Injustice for 14 hours, she put the eye patch on and went to sleep.

* * *

Max woke up the next day with the sound of an alarm clock. She yawned, got out of bed, got dressed and made some breakfast. She was about to sit down when she heard a knock on her door...

It was none other than the Flash. "Um, excuse me?" asked Max. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Why not?" asked the Flash. "I'm just visiting my old friend, can't I?"

Max was genuinely surprised. "Old friend? Sorry, but I think you've mistaken me for somebody else. We've never met."

"Whaddaya mean, we've never met?" The Flash retaliated. "Look, I know you. You're Maxine Morris—"

_Wait, Maxine Morris? How on earth does he know my name? _

"—superhero name Raiden, the youngest member of the Justice League—"

_What? _

"—and Princess Kori'andr of Tamaran's future consort!" Max couldn't believe her ears. She was the youngest member of the Justice League, and Starfire's fiancee! Well, she did have a crush on Starfire, but this wasn't—She looked around, and saw a superhero suit hanging on the wall. Then she looked back at the Flash—Barry—who told her, "Listen, Max, this is no time to act crazy. Crazier things are happening outside. Sinestro tricked Hal and Clark into joining his cult, and Clark's gone all Adolf Hitler on the world. Only you can solve this."

_Meanwhile, at the Hall Of Justice... _

"I'm impressed, Officer Sprague. Few creatures have taken this amount of punishment and maintained their silence." said Sinestro, as he was torturing a cop.

Suddenly, Clark stepped in and said "That's enough."

"Not yet." Sinestro replied, and continued on.

Clark couldn't hold it anymore, and stepped in between the two. "I said, that's enough!" He then helped officer Sprague to his feet.

"No! No kindness!" Sinestro snapped. "Superman, a word outside."

Some time later, Sinestro and Clark were having a little talk. "I understand if you ain't comfortable with this sorta enhanced interrogation. But our allies are being held. And who knows what the enemy is doing to them? We must find 'em, and this man is our only link to Batman and his resistance."

"He has given us nothing. He knows nothing." said Clark. "I..."

"Perhaps. But you said yourself that Batman inspires loyalty. Gimme more time. Don't worry, Superman. Part of leadership is knowing when to delegate to the strengths of others. This is unpleasant business but it's something I'm very effective at. If this man has information, I _will _uncover it. You have more significant issues to attend to. You have an entire world to nurture and protect. You're far too important to concern yourself with this one insignificant traitor. Please, lemme take this small burden from you."

"Okay, fine." said Clark, and he left as Sinestro continued on with the interrogation.


End file.
